Noticeboard

CHRISTMAS CLOSING- Please note the days we will be closed over the Christmas and New Year period: Monday 25th December Closed, Tuesday 26th December Closed, Monday 1st January 2018 Closed.

FAX MACHINE- will be decommissioned from 31st December. After this date we are unable to accept or send faxes.

Flu season is here!

Please note we will be contacting patients who are eligible for the flu vaccine in the coming weeks. Our clinics will be held from October . If you have a chronic disease, aged over 65yrs, a carer or pregnant you are eligible for the flu vaccine. This year we are offering the QUADRIVALENT flu vaccine that protects against 4 types of flu. Some other providers of the flu vaccine may not be able to offer this version and may still be offering the TRIVALENT vaccine which protects against 3 types of flu. If you want to make an appointment for your flu vaccine contact the surgery.

Clinics & Services

Chronic Illnesses

Appointments should be made via reception for regular monitoring of these conditions.

Additional Services

Immunisation Clinic

Our Immunisation Clinic is Tuesdays, 09:30 to 11:00.

Family Planning

There are a variety of methods of contraception available to you. Please discuss these with the doctor or nurse. If you need the morning after pill the sooner you take it the more effective it will be. Please make an appointment with the doctor as soon as possible.

Baby Clinics

These are held by the health visitors at Winifred Kettle Centre and Horwich Clinic. Please contact Westhoughton Clinic on 01204 335040.

Travel Vaccinations

If you require any vaccinations relating to foreign travel you need to make an appointment with the practice nurse to discuss your travel arrangements. This will include which countries and areas within countries that you are visiting to determine what vaccinations are required.

There is further information about countries and vaccinations required on the links below:

It is important to make this initial appointment as early as possible - at least 8 weeks before you travel - as a second appointment will be required with the practice nurse to actually receive the vaccinations. These vaccines have to be ordered as they are not a stock vaccine. Your second appointment needs to be at least 4 weeks before you travel to allow the vaccines to work.

Some travel vaccines are ordered on a private prescription and these incur a charge over and above the normal prescription charge. This is because not all travel vaccinations are included in the services provided by the NHS.

Travel Health Questionnaire

To help us offer the appropriate advice, please fill out the online form before coming to see the nurse.

If you are travelling to Europe the EU has published useful information for travellers on the European website.

Non-NHS Services

The NHS provides most health care to most people free of charge but there are exceptions. Charges have to be made for services not covered by the NHS treatment, for example, medical reports for insurance companies.

It is important to understand that GPs are not employed by the NHS, they are self-employed, and they have to cover their costs - staff, buildings, heating, lighting etc. - in the same way as any small business. The NHS covers these costs for NHS work, but for non-NHS work the fee has to cover the doctor's costs. All this work requires time on the part of the doctors and their secretarial staff.

Examples of non-NHS services for which our GPs charge their NHS patients are:

Accidental/sickness insurance certificates

Certain travel vaccinations

Private medical insurance reports

HGV, PSV medicals

Pre-employment medicals

Elderly driver medicals

Whenever possible, we try to complete such forms and reports within two weeks of receipt. Sometimes this can take a little longer - the relevant GP might be away on holiday for example. The GPs have to find time to complete this sort of paperwork in amongst all their other duties and it can take time to read through a patient's set of notes in order to answer the questions raised.

Although it may seem that a form requires no more than a doctor's signature, it is a condition of remaining on the Medical Register that they only sign what they know to be true. In order to complete even the simplest of forms, therefore, the doctor might have to check the patient's entire medical record. Carelessness or an inaccurate report can have serious consequences for the doctor with the General Medical Council or even the Police.

For fees for Non-NHS Services please click here or enquire at reception.

Test Results

If you need to ring the surgery to check results (blood, smear, X-ray etc.) please ring after 11.30am.

Palliative Care

A framework to help deliver a 'gold standard of care' to all people with advanced illness.

Pregnancy Advisory Service

Access for All

We want to get better at communicating with our patients. We want to make sure you can read and understand the information we send you. If you find it hard to read our letters or if you need someone to support you at appointments, please let us know.

We want to know if you need information in braille, large print or easy read.

We want to know if you need a British Sign Language interpreter or advocate.

We want to know if we can support you to lipread or use a hearing aid or communication tool.

Please tell the receptionist when you arrive for your next appointment, or call us on 01942 813678.

The Accessible Information Standard in our NHS contract directs and defines a specific, consistent approach to identifying, recording, flagging, sharing and meeting the information and communication support needs of patients, service users, carers and parents, where those needs relate to a disability, impairment or sensory loss.

The Accessible Information Standard directs and defines a specific, consistent approach to identifying, recording, flagging, sharing and meeting the information and communication support needs of our patients, service users, carers and parents, where those needs relate to a disability, impairment or sensory loss.

Stable Fold pledges to improve patient safety

Stable Fold announces it has pledged to improve patient safety as part of the national campaign, Sign up to Safety.

Sign up to safety is a national patient safety campaign to help the NHS in England build a safer NHS and address the problem of unsafe care and avoidable harm. So far, over 360 organisations have pledged support and are committed to improve the safety of healthcare through locally led, self-directed safety improvement.

Stacey Walsh, Practice Manager at Stable Fold said: ' By joining Sign up to Safety, Stable Fold is demonstrating its commitment to focusing on patient safety so that all patients and the staff that care for them are free from avoidable harm. We will achieve this by both designing our care processes so that they support safer care and by focusing our efforts on a small number of priority areas where avoidable harm can be reduced for the majority of patients.'

The five Sign up to Safety pledges

Putting safety first. Commit to reduce avoidable harm in the NHS by half and make public our locally developed goals and plans

Continually learn. Make our organisation more resilient to risks, by acting on the feedback from patients and staff and by constantly measuring and monitoring how safe our services are

Being honest. Be transparent with people about our progress to tackle patient safety issues and support staff to be candid with patients and their families if something goes wrong

Collaborating. Take a lead role in supporting local collaborative learning, so that improvements are made across all of the local services that patients use

Being supportive. Help people understand why things go wrong and how to put them right. Give staff the time and support to improve and celebrate progress.

About Sign up to Safety

Sign up to Safety is a national initiative helping organisations and individuals working across all healthcare settings provide the safest possible care to their patients.

At the heart of Sign up to Safety is the philosophy of locally led, self-directed safety improvement. We believe in the balance between nationwide solutions and local improvement; that adapting tools to fit local context and working on things that matter to frontline staff are crucial.

We believe in a positive safety culture; where staff are supported when things go wrong. Through our actions we aim to help people feel proud of what they do. We see each day and every action as an opportunity to learn and improve and we welcome everyone who wishes to get involved.

Our approach is to enable people to help each other work together and celebrate progress; importantly we help people share what they are doing for others to learn from.

Our role is to provide practical support and guidance through digital channels and social media; making it quicker and easier for our members to find what they need to know, to be inspired and motivated to keep going.

Sign up to Safety is one of a series of safety initiatives launched by the Department of Health, borne out of recent reviews into safety in the NHS including The Francis Review and Professor Don Berwick’s report A Promise to Learn a Commitment to Act which highlighted the need for the NHS ‘to become, more than ever before, a system devoted to continual learning and improvement of patient care, top to bottom and end to end’.

Several initiatives are working in partnership to establish and deliver a single vision for the whole NHS to become the safest healthcare system in the world. For a summary visit www.signuptosafety.nhs.uk.

Find Local Services In Your Area

Enter all or part of your postcode in the box below and click one of the buttons
to find those services that are local to you.